The Sound Board

Impact Soundworks is proud to announce Straight Ahead Jazz Horns, created in collaboration with Straight Ahead Samples! This revamped library features over 75,000 samples of 13 solo brass and sax instruments perfect for jazz, funk, pop, R&B and more. Each instrument is deeply sampled with a variety of crucial techniques and ornaments, all totally customizable with our TACT system of articulation control and mapping.
http://vi-control.net/community/threads ... rks.59722/

Between Andrew revamping this and a list price of almost a tenth of BBB, I'm interested in seeing a walkthrough.

I have a bit of a "here we go again" feeling-nevertheless the crazy monkeys in the music software industry have me pricking up my ears once again..

I talked to Andrew about them at NAMM. He swears that I will love them.

Jay, your BBB slip is showing

Is this an updated version of their library last year? I hate to say it, but that sounded truly awful to me. For BBB's faults, it was in another league to that. But here's hoping this revamp is a big leap forward.

I believe that it is new recordings.

"Revamped" and the price don't say new recordings to me.

Lawrence wrote:"Revamped" and the price don't say new recordings to me.

I thought that at NAMM he said they were, but I am an old guy so my memory is not trustworthy

Playing the old guy card? Ha!

From Nabeel:

We'll be releasing pricing information not long from now. And we do agree, with the circumstances surrounding the original library, some people may feel uncomfortable that they would have to pay a substantial amount for the remake. We are making sure to include that in our discussion, so don't worry!

It is also worth noting, however, that this is not the same library with a new skin on it; in addition to edits and improvements to the sample content, the backend programming is done completely from the ground up, with all of our latest engineering methods and quality control we've developed at ISW over the last few years. Despite what I'm listing below, I reiterate we do want to make the discount deep enough to be worthwhile.

The articulation system is powered by TACT (first seen in the Ventus series), with some added features special to this library's usage. This allows a whole world of mapping articulations; the original SA Jazz Horns was limited to keyswitching.
Scripted articulations that include transitions and morphs sound substantially better.
There's a wealth of advanced parameters that you can use to tweak everything from the fade times on your legato, to the RR logic, to the sample offsets, to the ADSR... etc. etc. almost none of which were accessible in the original.
We've improved on some of the novel features from the original library, accessible on the advanced page as well, such as legato based on position in the bar (Accented Legato it was called), automatic leap accenting, and temporarily latching attack articulations.
Finally, the crown jewel, is the Smart Voicing multscript tech. The original SA Jazz Horns used a large combinatoric set of pre-baked chord samples that accounted for every melody harmonization in each of the available ensembles. This approach was ambitious but had some issues; the user was tied to a specific mix, with no variance in performance, no legato/glissando, limited set of articulations, etc.

The Smart Voicing is a different approach to the same concept. It's a multiscript that generates the voicings (authentic and idiomatic to these ensembles, handwritten by Trey Pollard of SAS) which have been compiled as a gigantic database of information for the algorithm to reference. Based on your melody and chord selected, it creates actual MIDI data that get sent in Kontakt midi channels to the solo instrument nkis. Keyswitches are passed, as well as CC, so when you switch articulations and dynamics, the ensemble responds as a whole unit.

This is magnitudes more flexible and more powerful than the original execution in the original SA Jazz Horns. The amount of time and engineering that went into this feature alone suggests that however small or large the deep discount is, it still needs to, in part, respect how much new work went into it, and how much new content and power the user is getting access to.

"You were right, Larry-no new recordings.

Sincerely, your greatest admirer,
Jay"

Well it depends on what "improvements to the sample content" means. I would think that it means added new samples but not sure.see

But of course I am your greatest admirer.

From Andrew:

"There are no new recordings, but we re-edited thousands of samples to clean them up, and we completely rebuilt how the entire sample pool is used in Kontakt (envelopes, modulators, sample offsets, script triggering). "

Ah, well then let's hope that the problems with the library that made it disappointing were not due to the samples themselves.

I'm sure they're much improved. Very sweet spot price-wise-crossing fingers. I'd love alternatives.

Well. I dunno.

https://impactsoundworks.com/product/st ... ns/#videos

Personally, I don't care about the smart voicing. I'm sure it will be helpful to some. There are enough articulations there. I will trust Andrew that he cleaned up the bugs.

My problem is that (and you can hear it on the video) the possibilities for a "large accordion" sound remain. There's something static about these samples, they don't seem to bite and bark as they should when called on to do so. The very first solo'd trumpet demonstration indicates this immediately. It sounds flat, the attacks just seem dull, the movement from note to note sounds artificial.

On the plus side, there might be something in there for mellower work- there's something to like in the tone of the saxes and bones-I dunno. I wish there were mutes. I'd like to hear both for longer held notes. Hopefully Andrew will do another, more comprehensive video.

The price is hard to beat. As an addition to my present setup, the pricing wouldn't be onerous.
For hobbyists, it's certainly better than JABB.

A conundrum so far.

If you want mellow Sam's does that well and you get a lot more stuff though not as much detail, still for me this does not raise the bar sonically.

Craig, I was hoping it might make good filler for me between SM and Chris Hein. Not too convinced so far.

I assume you're referring to P. S Swing? That's all sections, yes?

it is, there are a few solo instruments but only a trumpet for brass and its not complete.

I won't even upgrade. It's only $50, but: no. Apart from the fact that I *strongly* feel it's $50 which StraightAhead should pay to Andrew and NOT the customers who already paid good money for the original SAJH and who were sold a bug-ridden disaster of a library that even after updates never succeeded in working properly, I don't hear anything in any of these demos that makes me wanna reach for the Purchase -button.

But, seriously, and please bear with me for a second: Straight Ahead develops a library that is nowhere near finished the day it's released, goes on with selling it anyway (cynically commenting that it's 'a living library' and that we, who paid $299 for it, should therefore allow for a few rough edges and be patient for things to be smoothened out), then takes another few months or so to release an update or two which improve matters only slightly, and finally — probably at the end of their wits and realizing that it is beyond their powers to make this thing work the way they promised it would — abandons the project altogether and hands it over to ISW, thereby also abandoning all responsibility for the mess they sold us in the first place.
It's clever, I suppose. But it's not endearing.

If there is a still a trace of honour and decency among developers, it would seem only fair to me that StraightAhead takes care of all the upgrade fees for EVERYONE who purchased the original SAJH. (Can't have been that many, so I can't imagine it will hurt their operation.) That, plus a lifetime's worth of apologies to each of us.

_

Piet-I think it was your review (along with what I was hearing in the demos) that saved me $300 on this.

Disappointing. Of course, there's always the magical and ever imminent BBB update to look forward to. Also, I saw a unicorn in my backyard yesterday. *

*I live in Manhattan. I don't have a backyard.

Based on the new demos this actually sounds like a downgrade. I sent Straight Ahead a mail to see if they are willing to pay the upgrade, but don't expect a reply... I think I'll save my 50$.

The BBB update looks worthwhile as does the unicorn.

You mean the unison update, or the unicorn-like 2.0?

Both I like corn and i like Uni's, well at least Arizona.
oh yeah the unison update sounds quite good on the vid.